


Of what is past, or passing, or to come

by iwillpassthis



Series: rage, rage against the dying of the light [3]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, it's kind of bittersweet but it ends well i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24233071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillpassthis/pseuds/iwillpassthis
Summary: Sometimes the things that seem easy are the most difficult of them all.OREpilogue toWe shall meet again in the morning sun
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson & Sally Jackson
Series: rage, rage against the dying of the light [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1514570
Comments: 11
Kudos: 143





	Of what is past, or passing, or to come

Normalcy came back slowly.

Percy mourned Nico, and he mourned Hazel. Their shrouds had been burned already, and his only offer to them was a permanent sense of guilt deep down his stomach, that would probably never leave. He knew of course, that he hadn’t _personally_ killed them, nor that he had ever wished for them to die, but it didn’t seem to matter, not when there seemed to be a Nico and Hazel’s shaped hole between all of his friends.

They had tried to make him talk about it at first, but Percy didn’t understand what there was to talk about. He wasn’t there, he didn’t know. He had told them his father’s words to him already, he had spoken about their sacrifice in his “I am not dead” speech to the campers. And if they wanted him to talk about how he felt about it… well it was obvious wasn’t it? No one had bothered when Beckendorf had died, or when Michael and Castor had.

No one apart from Annabeth.

But it was difficult to talk to her too, sometimes, especially about Elissa. Not because Percy had felt any kind of attraction towards her nor because Annabeth didn’t believe him. It was just… difficult. It made it more real, in a way, while now that he was in a completely different place Ancient Greece seemed almost like a long dream from which he had finally woken up.

That’s what he thought most of the time.

Sometimes though, in those particularly hot summer nights when no matter how much you try, you can never fall asleep, he would think about his journey with some sort of melancholy. Yes he had been tired, exhausted and anxious all of the time but… Greece had been amazing, the people had been… well people. Some good, some bad, but they still had seemed to him more human than in New York, where no one had ever time for anything, where the tall skyscrapers seemed to watch upon his every move.  
He loved his city, and he would die for it, but it wasn’t made for humans as that little village near the sea had been, and no amount of technology and movies could bring him the same comfort that the star filled night sky had given him, and even the sea was different, weakened by centuries of pollution.

He missed the calm of it sometimes, when he felt brave enough to admit it to himself.

~~~

Three days after his return to Camp, Chiron called him into his office, the same one where he had slayed the snake, where his journey had started.  
When he arrived Chiron wasn’t there yet, and Percy let his gaze wander through the shelves of the old, dusty books, of all the things Chiron had accumulated through the years, the little souvenirs some of the older demigods sent him every now and them, and the photographs of some of the campers, him included, in colorful frames that made them seem even smaller.  
One of them caught his eye, and he took it from the table. His own laughing face looked back at him, eyes full of life and of a lighter green than he had had in years. His left arm was around Thalia’s neck, her black hair slightly longer than his that covered one of her eyes, while she grinned wide at the camera, her own right arm lost somewhere behind Percy.  
It must have been that first summer when she had come back, in one of the rare occasion they had been not only cordial, but also nice to each other. Maybe even friends.

“Oh I’ve always loved that photo,” someone said behind him, and Percy flinched slightly, putting it back where it was and turning towards the intruder. Chiron smiled sadly at him, and walked behind his desk, motioning Percy to sit down in front of him.

“You were so happy when you weren’t fighting” he continued, looking at him straight in his eyes. But Percy didn’t have the strength for this kind of game, and slumped back in the chair, shifting his gaze somewhere behind Chiron’s head.

The centaur sighed, but accepted the defeat. “I wanted to thank you, as a first thing. I know we didn’t really have time to speak in these days… I understand of course, you were tired,”  
_and avoiding me_ he probably must have thought, but Percy was glad he hadn’t said it outloud. He couldn’t justify it even to himself. Or maybe he could but he hadn’t wanted to.

“but now I fear it’s time to discuss a couple of things.” He sighed and Percy could feel the centaur's gaze on him, but he refused to meet his eyes. Did Chiron blame him for what had happened? Was he angry that he had basically disobeyed all his advice, using his powers and revealing the truth of his situation?

“In the seventeen hundreds, a package arrived here, a very peculiar one indeed,” Chiron started, and Percy allowed confusion to slip through his features. This wasn’t what he was expecting, at all.  
“It was a small wooden box, typical of that age,” he continued, undisturbed, “with a note attached that didn’t make any sense for me at the time.” He chuckled slightly, and handed Percy a small bit of parchment, yellowed by time, where a short phrase was written in an elegant black ink. 

_Give this to Percy when the darkness ends._

Chiron looked at him expectantly, but Percy couldn’t utter a word, and felt tears form into his eyes. He had never cried this much, not in all his life, and he wondered if this journey in Ancient Greece had really been the straw that broke the camel’s back and now all the stress and the fear and the anger he had accumulated through the years was just coming back all at once. It wasn’t the right time to explore that theory though, and he swallowed back a sigh.

“What about the box?” he asked, in a very neutral voice that surprised even him. Chiron probably had expected it though, because he swiftly handed Percy a dark brown wooden box, decorated with flowers he didn’t recognize, the perfect size for…  
He looked at Chiron, who answered the silent question in his eyes. “I haven’t opened it, my boy,” he answered, “even if I must admit that I’ve been waiting for this moment for the past three hundred years.”

Percy nodded, and slowly passed his fingertips on the box, tasting the wood and taking the time to put a bit of order in his emotions. Then he took a big breath, and opened the easy lock.

A small dagger was among the velvet of the box insides, the silver blade a terrifying contrast with the redness of the velvet, almost as red as blood. He passed his thumb on the blade, carefully, and then on the handle, feeling the way it had been used, the shape of smaller hands that had left an impression there where they had gripped it.

This was the dagger he had given Elissa.

The grief was suddenly overwhelming, and Percy felt the room disappear for a moment, the air leaving his lungs and his vision becoming black and black and-

“Percy?” Chiron asked, a shade of concern in his voice, and he finally managed to open his eyes, looking at Chiron with the most controlled expression he could handle.

“It’s a dagger,” he said “it’s the dagger I gave Elissa in Greece,” he murmured, voice breaking on the last syllable. Chiron didn’t comment on it though, and just kept looking at him with those dark, concerned eyes of his, as if he was a porcelain vase on the verge of shattering. Percy hated that look.

He swallowed his emotions again. “Seventeen hundreds you said?” and at Chiron’s nod he continued, “Well, she lived a long life. Hope it was good.” He smiled, a difficult, strained smile that went nowhere near his eyes. He placed the dagger back in the box, closed it and handed it back to Chiron, who was still looking at him. He needed to leave, he needed to go back to his cabin and just let it out. Not in front of Chiron.

He raised from the chair, a strident sound filling the air. “If that’s all I have a couple of things to attend to” he said, and he was almost halfway through the room when Chiron stopped him.

“There is another thing actually,” he started, voice softer than he had ever heard, and his heart clenched again in anticipation. He turned around, slowly, and Chiron continued.

“A couple of years before you came to Camp...one of the huntresses came here. She gave me a sword, and convinced me to tell you it was a gift from your father.”

Percy swallowed harshly. Anaklusmos? It couldn’t be.

“I gave it to you when you came here at twelve”, he smirked, “and it had an annoying habit of returning to your pocket if you left it somewhere else.”

Percy lowered his hands on the pocket of his jeans, and his hand clenched around the familiar shape of a pen. He paled, and took his hand away immediately.

“That’s not possible,” he said, more to himself than to Chiron, “I gave it to…”

“And she gave it back to you,” Chiron concluded, “it’s unfortunate that we will never know her true motives.”

~~~

His mother was next.

She hugged him tightly, the smell of cookies and books filling his nose with an unexpected calm. She whispered ressurances in his ears, and for once they didn’t seem false, just distant as a faraway island.  
Paul grabbed his shoulder in a hard grip, tears in his eyes, and then he hugged him too, while Estelle held tight to his legs, singing a happy tale from one of the fairytales she loved so much.

Percy laughed and laughed, and the dinner was probably the most relaxing affair he had had in the past month, bu then that too came to an end, and the night gave no reprieve from the chaos of the day. There were still just as many cars outside, just as many people, just as much noise and light and-

His mother’s hands were on his cheeks and his hair and his own hands, and she was whispering, and crying with him, and Percy could feel the way her hands had been working, the way her face had gotten older and her hair had lost some of their vibrant colour, the stress in the hard lines of her forehead and it was _his_ fault and “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”, he chanted, unable to stop, unable to accept the comfort that was being offered to him.

But his mother didn’t let go, and didn’t shy away. “You have nothing to apologize for,“ she stated looking deep behind his eyes, “I knew from the first moment I held you that I would have never been able to close you inside four walls.”

“I will”, he said, desperate and willing to do anything just to keep her mother from looking like _that_ , “I can stay here, and never…”

“Don’t be ridiculous”, she answered , but there was fondness in her voice, “you don’t belong to me. I will never stop loving you, but I know that you can’t stay forever. You need to be free and strong and kind, darling. But live your life. Let this house be your safe harbour but don’t be afraid. I’ll be there.”

Percy only cried harder, but two days later he packed clothes and food and hopped on a train to the countryside.

Annabeth came with him and they camped in the mountains, lit fires and roasted marshmallows and told each other ghost stories under the light of the crescent moon. They walked and tried weird foods, and argued and made love under the stars, and talked and talked, and the more he did, the more it became easier, until having Annabeth by his side became the only thing Percy ever wanted to have in his life.  
He proposed to her in a crispy night at the start of September, with a ring made of woven daisies, and Annabeth laughed and cried and hugged him tightly. 

~~~

They held the wedding on the following June, and it was loud and boisterous and full of familiar faces, new and old friends, nymphs and curious gods.

It was perfect, and it was theirs.

~~~

He spoke to his father on a cold December morning. The wind was ruffling his already messy hair, and he was late for class, _again_ , when he saw a familiar figure across the street.

“Breakfast?” his father proposed when he reached him, pointing the busy Starbucks, and Percy nodded. It was weird, and a bit awkward at first when the barista spelled Poseidon’s name wrong, but then he asked about his travelling and Percy gladly took the occasion to retell his and Annabeth’s wandering through the continent

“It felt good,” Percy concluded when he felt he had said everything, “knowing that there was nothing we _had_ to do, that we could just take our time from one place to the other.”

His father had never stopped looking at him, and it seemed like he had attentively listened to every part of his rambling. When he stopped talking, Poseidon just smiled, and leaned further into his chair.

“You grew up fast,” he commented, an hinge of sadness into his voice that had no business being there, because yes, his life had been a disaster and a lot of horrible things had happened to him, but now he was _happy_ , he realized, maybe for the first time since he had come back.

Poseidon opened his mouth to talk again, and Percy read the apology in the lines of his face. He had no desire to hear it. It hadn’t been his fault either, after all.

“Will you come to my wedding?” he asked instead, and the god just laughed, and paid for their breakfast.

In June though, he was there, and he was smiling.

~~~

Normalcy came back slowly, or maybe it didn’t come back at all. Maybe it had never even been there at all.

The nightmares were still there, the monsters still attacked him and on some days the grief was so strong that all the world seemed grey and dead and surviving felt like an impossible task. But he was never alone, not truly.

And he was home, and loved and happy, and for now it had to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are!  
> Now that this journey is actually over, I wanted to give my thanks again to all who commentented, bookmarked, or gave kudos to my stories. I would have never managed without you!  
> In particular, I wanted to offer my sincere gratitude to MajaTheFangirl, who always left lovely reviews and gave me the motivation to keep writing, and also to brittany_likes_books, whose comments helped me pass the rough moments of writing.  
> I hope to see some of you again in my next works, and that you enjoyed this epilogue!


End file.
